Stornoway Castle /  by Christoph Corves

Stornoway Castle, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, 2025

In the visual geography project "Cracks and Holes" I map places and their stories on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Stornoway Castle was built by Sir James Matheson who bought the entire Island of Lewis in the 19th century. Matheson was a drug dealer. He made his fortune trading opium to China. When China attempted to stop the opium trade, Matheson convinced the British government to start the opium war against China. He evicted dozens of villages on the Isle of Lewis to establish hunting estates for the British elites. Organized crime was part of the British establishment. Scotland and particularly the Outer Hebrides were treated as other colonies of the British empire.

Shot on Kodak Tri-X400 film.

How to create camera scans from Widelux panoramic photos? /  by Christoph Corves

The Widelux F8 camera makes photos in the format 24*59mm on 35mm film. They are too large for the usual 35mm film scanners. I decided to try the valoi camera scanning system. First trials showed that it is important to exclude any stray light, which may come from windows, any other light souce but also from the valoi light system itself. As no mask is available from valoi that fits the Widelux format, I decided to build a simple mask from card board myself.

The setup works quite nicely. I work with a Fuji X-T1 camera (16 megapixel) mounted on a 45 years old very stable Kaiser enlarger. 16 megapixels seem to be at the bottom end of what is required for a medium format wide photo (59mm). After scanning, I postprocess the photos with Photoshop. The results look nice and are of sufficient pixel resolution for 20*30cm or even slightly larger prints.